A day in my life.

You may be wondering what a missionary wife does on a day to day basis. I can speak just for myself, but my days go a little something like this...

This picture sums up my days after school is done.

Some people may think that the life of a missionary wife is always exciting and we are always on the go. But, day to day life for this missionary wife and mommy is full of school, laundry, cooking, cleaning, language learning, teaching a Sunday school class, going to visitation, smiling and being friendly to those around me. 

I'm sure my day to day will change once we are out on our own and get a church going. Right now, our job is to learn the language and culture. Why? Because without a firm foundation in the language and the culture we can't properly reach those we have come to minister to. Hungarian isn't an easy language to learn. The similarities between the grammar and sentence structure in Greenlandic and Hungarian is crazy! But, we are very thankful to have people around us that are happy to help us. They have been very patient as we stumble and butcher their language as we are learning. :) 

Tea talk...

Three of my favorite things! My owl tea cup, my Bible from a very dear friend, and my journal!

    It's a cold snowy day here in Debrecen. We went this morning and helped take down the Christmas decorations at church, then went for a walk in the snow. Now we are home and we're relaxing before church tomorrow.

    As we are all kinda doing our own thing,  I thought I would share some of things that I have been thinking about lately. So, let's have some Tea Talk. I have my tea all made up, so let's go!

    On January 27th it will be a year since we first visited Hungary! Time flies! We would have never imagined that The Lord would have placed us here in Hungary. But, I'm so glad He did. :)  I love my Hungary home.

    Sometimes we get asked if we will ever go back to Greenland? Well, probably not. I see that as a part of our past and we have to look forward, not backwards. We are still in contact with our friends we made while we lived in Greenland. I hope those are lifelong friendships that we can cherish. Sometimes letting go is hard. We do still talk about Greenland, it was a huge chunk of our missionary ministry. Some of the things are hard to talk about while others bring smiles. As I think back at our time in Greenland, The Lord certainly matured me as a Christian, wife and mother. Believe me, I have not "arrived" but, I have grown.  

    We don't understand sometimes why God does things. Like moving some arctic missionaries to central Europe! But, we can take what we learned in Greenland and apply it here in Hungary. Reflecting back over this last year I see areas I need to improve and areas that I have grown. It's easy to trust God in the easy times and it's easy to get upset during the hard times. I have learned, and I'm still learning, to lean on the Lord more during those hard times. Psalm 121 has been my go to passage of scripture when I feel overwhelmed. I find it soothing and comforting.

    I hope some of my openness has helped someone. I think I may try to have some "Tea Talk" once a month. If it helps anyone, it helps me. :)

Trying to get a little organized!

A little organization never hurt anyone. :) At least that's what I keep telling myself. One area I struggle in is menu planning. I LOVE to cook, I just really don't like the whole process of planning out a menu for a week. So, I was trying to figure out a way to make the process a little less  painful.

I have decided to try to plan out our menu monthly. I found a menu meal planner that I downloaded and printed out, and after getting horribly distracted by the kids cartoons, I finally got it all filled in!  I also filled out a weekly menu plan to go along with the monthly one. We go grocery shopping every Monday.

I decided to show you what my menu looks like.  

Here is a link to the website that I got my menu planner from. She has several free ones that you can download and print out. I do believe she had me at "free"! They are also very colorful and cute! 

Our menu for the month. Now all I have to do is get together a grocery list each week! Easy peasy!

This is for next week. I like how it has the menu and the grocery list on the same page. I often forget why I need a certain item.

I made a list of meals we eat on a regular bases and also added a few new ones in there also. The marks by them are how many times in the month they are repeated. :)

With the help of my yogurt and tea, we got it done!!

Grocery shopping here in Hungary

 I thought I would share with you guys what our grocery store looks like. This was one of the questions I was asked on Facebook.  We have several grocery stores in our town, but the closest to us is called Interspar. So, we go there because it's the closest.

I will forewarn you, this is a heavy picture post!

All of our grocery store trips start at the tram stop! And we always have our rolling cart, it has been a huge help hauling groceries home!

The walkway up to the store. 

The bakery right in the entrance, it smells amazing!  

The produce section is good here, there are other stores that I like to get my produce from in the summer. But, since it has been so cold, we just get it all at here.

Eggs aren't refrigerated. You wouldn't believe how long it took me to find the eggs the first time I went shopping. I kept looking in the refrigerator section, not the produce section. :)

You have to weigh your own produce. This was fun to figure out too! I irritated many workers before I figured it out. 

Our milk comes in boxes! You  can get fresh milk out of a machine, but the box milk is more convenient. 

We have Oreo! I don't care for them, but my family loves them!

The fresh bread section! 

Fresh pastries smell amazing!

We have Heinz. It's a little pricey,  899 forent is about $3. Every once in a while I'll get it, but the cheaper brand tastes just as good. :)

The candy isle! My kids favorite! (And mine too)

Fresh meat!

More Heinz ketchup! I will confess, I have been known to splurge and buy Heinz ketchup when it's not on sale!

The cheese section. Not my favorite part of the store! Marty and the kids usually pick out the cheese since I'm allergic and don't eat it. :)

Lays! 299 Forint=$1.02...YES!!

Down on of the main isles

We have pretty much all the major brand American sodas here.

Lots of juice, water and sodas

My kids favorite section! 

Lots of odds and ends

You can get your major appliances here too!

A small baby section. 

This was short line. Most of the time the lines are really long!

You have to bag up your own groceries. You also have to pay for the bags. We use reusable ones, it saves some money! 

All bagged up and ready to go!

We take the tram and then walk the rest of the way home! Everyone chips in and we get it done!

Eryn got to carry the bucket of oranges we bought today!